One of the greatest improvements in Photoshop CS3 is the ability to open JPG and TIFF images in Camera Raw, allowing full access to all of the tools and adjustments previously only available to photos shot in RAW format.

Again, this is a JPG file that is being opened in Camera Raw. What is so significant about this? For starters, it gives us access to a wealth of adjustments that can be applied for corrections to color, light, exposure, etc., all which can be non-destructively saved with the image.

Below is my JPG file opened as Camera Raw, which is a picture that suffers from the result of having been there at the wrong time of day:

[photo: Silent City in Bryce Amphitheater, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah]

Let us delve further into some of the new features of Camera Raw in CS3, which open up a world of possibilities, especially now that we may apply them to JPG images.

Back to Basics

The coloring of the sliders provides an instant visual understanding of what each slider will accomplish, which makes the new Camera Raw so much easier to use. Also new to CS3 on the Basic (”B”) tab are sliders for Recovery, Fill Light, and Vibrance.

Recovery

Recovery is both a major improvement and an excellent complement to the Exposure slider, as it allows you to reduce the clipped highlight areas without having to lower the exposure. The snapshot below reveals the overexposed nature of this photograph:

We’re not going to be able to bring the sky back, but by bringing down the Exposure slider and boosting the Recovery slider, we can clearly see the photo come back to life:

The lower-left half of the photo is pretty dark, so let’s look at how to brighten things up.

Fill Light

The Fill Light slider is really amazing, as it will allow us to lighten up the shadows of this photograph in a very realistic way, without affecting the highlights:

Now we can actually see those incredible hoodoos that were previously getting covered up by the shadows; however, the photo is still looking pretty dull, so let’s bring out some more of that color.

Vibrance

The Vibrance slider will most likely make the Saturation slider obsolete, as it very cleverly affects saturation for only those areas of color that are not already well-saturated (as opposed to the Saturation slider, which affects all colors equally). [Note: In addition to increasing Vibrance for this example, I also increased the Temperature, Tint, Blacks, and Contrast sliders to give a more noticeable visual impression.]

Now the photograph is looking a bit over-cooked, so let’s move on over to the Tone Curve (”T”) tab.

Name That Tone

The traditional Point curve control is still available for making customized curve adjustments or setting the pre-packaged medium and large contrast settings. New to CS3, however, is a much more elegant and user-friendly Parametric curve control. Once on the T tab, click on over to the Parametric sub-tab./p>

Parametric Curve Control

Here, it is very easy to figure out where to make your adjustments to Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows. This picture is still pretty blown out, so I am going to reduce the lights and boost the shadows, while pulling back some of that saturation from the previous example:

The result is a very graceful curve adjustment that is most likely much better than what I could have come up with manually, using the custom Point curve control. This photograph, though not great, has improved tremendously from its original state. Just think what you will be able to do with that near-perfect photo.

Keep On Cookin’

The new Camera Raw should be further explored with as much abandon as one can muster. The incredibly helpful color-guided sliders for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance are potentially even more useful when converting the image to Grayscale. Split Toning allows for color saturation to be applied to highlights and shadows separately, with a balance control to adjust between the two settings. There is excellent control over sharpening, noise reduction, lens correction, and camera calibration. Finally, you may save all of your settings as Presets, to be applied to other images down the road. Overall, Adobe has made a huge leap with Camera Raw in CS3, which will most likely gain a wider audience with the added support of JPG images.